26 June 2003

Supreme Court: Good and Bad

Today marked a big decision on the part of the Supreme Court, and the good news is that they acted firmly and surprisingly brazenly to both revoke their previous poor judgment on privacy in this country, and to sweep away the backwards laws that suggested homosexuality is a crime.

This is an enormous victory not just for gay people, who should long ago have been fully recognised as law-abiding citizens, but also for heterosexual people. Fascists and pinheads have always portrayed the sodomy laws as applying only to homosexuals, but they most certainly do not.

Here in Florida, our sodomy laws are so strict that oral and anal sex -- even among consenting, married heterosexual couples -- is illegal. In some states (coughTEXAScoughGEORGIAcough), any sex act other than the missionary position is forbidden by law. The sodomy laws are so stupid and silly that even Justice Clarence Thomas, a right-wing homophobe if ever there was one, recognised them as ridiculous -- even though he still wanted to uphold their constitutionality.

So the good news is that America now has better privacy laws, and gays have a strong footing for obtaining their full legal rights which have for far too long been denied them.

The bad news is that it is now obvious (as if it wasn't already) that at least two Supreme Court justices are not only vicious, evil, religious conservative Republican partisans, they are certifiably insane. (and yes -- there's a difference :)

Chief Justice William "homosexuality=beastiality, incest and child molestation" Rehnquist and Justice Antonin "homosexuals should be hunted down and imprisoned, if not killed outright" Scalia both wrote in their dissenting opinions that the Court had bought into "the homosexual agenda" (a concept as non-existant as "the liberal media") and that the Court had taken the wrong side in "the culture war."

Say what??

Tell me, Justices ... what do the aliens who kidnapped and probed you think of all this?